


easy/lucky/free

by Anemoi



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 19:09:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16024148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/pseuds/Anemoi
Summary: You close your eyes and you’re walking down Anfield road again: these are the streets of your town, this is the apartments on Venmore road, the field to your left and Stanley Park ahead.





	easy/lucky/free

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redandgold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold/gifts).



> emotionally this is actually a sort-of sequel to run for the light, as in, that fic doesn't need a sequel but this one alludes to it //shruggie paws
> 
> for Rach, in anticipation of crisp fic (!!!!!)

 

 

 

27 January, 2006 

  
  


You close your eyes and you’re walking down Anfield road again: these are the streets of your town, this is the apartments on Venmore road, the field to your left and Stanley Park ahead.    
  


It wasn’t always this. 

You have earlier memories of Goodison if you were being honest, remembering the elicit sessions of rehashing your old heroes with Steve, Graeme Sharp and Andy Gray and Trevor Steven over fried rice at the chippy downtown. Steve was still a little bit of a toffee then and unashamed of it, hands stuck in the pockets of his liverpool tracksuit and dreamy eyed recalling the ‘84 Cup final at Wembley. It always made you feel odd, after, a little ashamed, like you were both doing something childish that should’ve been left behind. Pretty soon it stopped, both of you too caught in your own clubs, in belonging wholly to something that consumed your lives. You know when you stopped being a blue (the first time you put on the liverpool shirt, eleven years old,  _ this is yours now and it’ll always be _ ) but you wondered about him. Maybe the blue in Steve only got washed out little by little. Maybe something always remained, like an inevitable separation, the boy who remembered glory in Goodison first. 

You close your eyes and you’re walking down Anfield road again. Retrace your steps- you’re eleven, sixteen, eighteen, twenty three.    
  


You’re thirty one. Standing in the shadows under the overarch of Anfield above you, standing in the manager’s office with a bad leg and squinting at the line again, the dotted line with your name printed beside. This is your name but you had another one, here, shorter. Just three letters. You raise a hand - no lightning - you put the pen to paper, and you’re home again. 

  
  
  
  
  


-

 

Steve’s the first person you told after you got the call, sitting in the car staring at your steering wheel in disbelief. The radio’s on, some pop song blaring quietly in the background, all tinny and echoing. The thing is, you’ve never thought about it- never thought you could go back- you were texting Davey about Australia just an hour ago, pondering the specifics.  _ Australia.  _ Australia can fuck off or wait forever,  _ you were going home.  _

“Macca,” you yell, incoherent into the phone, palms still stinging from smacking the wheel in glee. “They offered me a contract.” 

To his credit, he never even asks who. Maybe it was obvious, all along. You think it should be. Liverpool was your best love if not your first- the lover you didn’t want to leave and yet left. 

The lover you had lost, young. 

  
  
  
  
  


-

 

You’ve barely settled back into your old house in Liverpool before Steve calls you again, saying he needed to visit and telling you to get your guest room ready. 

“When did you get so pushy,” you say, making a note on your calendar. 

“Piss off,” he laughs. “So am I welcome or not?” 

You tell him, very seriously, “Always.” 

There’s a sharp intake of breath on the other side of the line for a second, but you’re used to that, and he gets right back in with a dig at you about Celine Dion and promises of ear flicking in the future, and it was alright in the end. Like you’d saved a glass from a wobble and set it back, flat, on the table. 

  
  
  
  
  


-

 

The second debut feels nothing like the first one - no one ever talks about it, probably because it was so rare, and you had no idea what to expect from it. It just didn’t happen, everything tinged with a subtle sense of unreality, Rafa gesturing at you to get up from the bench and the stadium sound rising with you. You glimpse a banner in the stands -  _ Fowler God 11 welcome back to heaven -  _ and you run onto the pitch. 

 

It’s not a memorable game. Not for your lack of trying, offside goal and all.

Afterward, the locker room is subdued, the draw feeling like a loss because it’s bloody  _ Birmingham _ . Xabi looks dejected but you think they’ll cut him some slack yet, or at least Stevie will. Sure enough, Stevie’s the one who slings an arm around Xabi, whispering some words of comfort close by his ear. 

You go through the routine- they’ve upgraded the showers, but the benches were the same. And who do you see when you’re coming out of the lockers but Steve, still carrying his suitcase, laughing uproariously at something Carra said. You almost freeze for a second, looking at him unassuming and just right, somehow, in Anfield. 

“What’re you doing here?” you say stupidly, coming up to them, already smiling at him before he even turns to you. 

“Came to offer my congratulations, didn’t I,” Steve says, smacking Carra on the arm. Carra rolls his eyes and punches him back, squeezes your arm and heads into the lockers. 

“Didn’t think you’d tie,” Steve continues, falling in beside you as you leave the bustle of the stadium behind. “Second half was a shambles though.” 

“You watched?”   
  
“Caught most of it. Came straight from the airport actually. Saw you come on, grinning like a berk, can spot that from a mile away, mostly ‘cos your ears practically disappear into your hair when you do that-” He doesn’t stop prattling on the whole way to the car park but he puts an arm around you, and you feel the sullen mood from the match lift a little. You wished you’d looked up in the match and saw him watching, not exactly sure why, but wishing it nevertheless. 

“Home, then?” you ask in the car, shivering and waiting for the heat to warm up the freezing insides, shaking snow off your gloves. 

Steve’s smirking from the passenger seat. You’re not sure why you ever asked. 

  
  
  
  
  


-

 

You’re not really old. You have to remember to tell yourself that, sometimes,  _ you’re not really old,  _ even waking up with a hundred different aches and pains and peering into the mirror in the morning, seeing your skin stretch out over your face day by day. You don’t think you’ve ever been vain - as far as footballers go - sure, you’ve lost your head a bit back when you were young and thought peroxide blonde was a good look, but Steve and the rest had mocked you so mercilessly it remained a ridiculous one-off. 

So maybe it’s not vanity, really, it’s just a side effect of being a legend. That nostalgia, all boxed in like: you’re in a glass cabinet with all the trophies you’ve won and people look at you, you banging on the glass,  _ I’m still alive,  _ you say,  _ look at me, I’m not old yet, _ but they shake their heads and turn away. 

Tossing drinks back in the pub with Steve, you think, this is not any type of vengeance except on yourself, but this is the only thing you can do like you’ve always done- and if you spare a thought for how far you’ve come then- 

Steve glances at you, under the dim lights, puts his mouth on the rim of your glass and drinks deep. 

  
  
  


-

He staggers out onto the streets and almost slips on the slick ice at the edge of the curb, except you’ve got an arm around him, haul him back bodily while he giggles all useless and clutching at your neck to keep his balance. 

“Macca, stand u-” 

He says something unintelligible and pinches your ear, and you almost want to drop him in the snowbank and be done with it. It’s all quiet out here, somehow, the heavy bar door swinging shut and insulating you from the noise and uproar inside. There’s a waning moon hanging still over the rooftops. 

Steve breathes out one long breathe like a dragon, whooping at the way the white haze spread up in the air and expanded, growing shimmery under the light of the streetlamps. 

“Reckon we need a taxi?” he says, finally standing up. He leaves his arm around your shoulders. 

“Fucker,” you say, still, madly, unable to restrain your fondness. “We can walk. I can see my house from here.” 

The whole way back you’re balanced on each other, pushing through the freshly fallen snow that haven’t been shovelled out of the way yet, and you think about it, those matching steps behind you that you leave. 

  
  
  
  
  


-

The night was so cold you’re both practically sober again when you stumble wearily in the front door. 

“Oh,” Steve says as soon as you lock the door. “Forgot my suitcase in your car.” 

“We’re not going back out to get it,” you say, “just wear my things or something.” 

He laughs for too long at this, apparent perfect fodder for more small ear jokes - your shirt won’t fit him because it can’t slide over his head because he has normal sized ears, which didn’t even make sense really- so you leave him in the living room and trudge upstairs by yourself. 

You’re trying to find clean towels your housekeeper hid somewhere when you hear him shuffle behind you. 

“Macca?” you say, turning around. 

He almost jumps, like a startled cat. Maybe he’s still not quite sober, face flushed in spots on his cheeks and eyes too bright. Maybe you just stared at him wrong. 

 

You don’t know what it is in your face, but something in his face changes, like a crack appearing and everything just collapsing on itself. You see the misery, all of a sudden, underneath his polished veneer, see what all these years has done to you, the both of you, his misery reflecting yours. It seizes all the breathe left in your lungs- 

You take a step forward, but Steve’s always got longer legs, and he only needs a stride forward to get to you, to shove you back into the bannisters, your torso leaning precariously over the top, weightless. He stares at you and hovers- uncertain- and just buries his face in the crook of your neck instead. 

 

Growler, he says. 

 

You know he’s always been weird about that. It’s not like, this is the one thing to break you after all you’ve been through, but it is. Maybe the City stint is what finally broke you both, him more than you, and maybe your response to being broken has always been the same. You pull his head back by his stupid curly hair, cut slightly shorter now so you complain about the lack of grip, but still lovely and soft in your hand- 

He looks at you, disbelieving, mouth all crooked in want, and you kiss him.

Some people say it’s your way to be ruthless in front of the goal. You don’t think that’s the only place you’re ruthless. You are done running. You are done pretending. You are coming home. 

His mouth opens, automatic, and you kiss him till his knees won’t hold him up anymore and he moans, arms shaking by either side of you. 

 

After the drought, the flood. 

  
  
  
  
  


-

In the morning you walk around with Steve before afternoon training, visiting all the spots you’ve been to before. You still get stopped- you joke it’s because the older you get the more distinctive you look, but Steve still puts a hat on and looks indistinguishable from anyone. Granted the type of hat has changed, though. You couldn’t make up some of Steve’s fashion choices, before and always. 

You end up by the docks, even though the wind was colder here. Steve doesn’t seem to feel it, or maybe he’s missed this. It doesn’t get this cold in Majorca, you bet, and no matter how many times Steve mentions he loves the warm weather there you can’t help but think he missed this. The snow, the cold creeping in through your layers, and the roiling grey sky above you. 

 

“Did you know,” Steve says, nodding up at the two liverbirds perched on the building above them. “If they ever fly away it’d mean the end of Liverpool?” 

“What do you mean, the end of?” 

“Like, the city would just disappear or something, you know.” 

You think about it, squinting up at the stiff birds, one looking over the city, the other facing the 

Mersey out to the sea. They seem stretched out and precarious, balanced on an edge. You think about the wind up there, what it must be like to be tossed and blown every which way. It must be hard to resist, even if they were made of copper. “No chance of that happening though, is there.” 

 

Steve laughs, kicks the railings gently. He tips his face up at the iron colored sky like he’s checking for snow, the grey waters of the river behind him framing his hair. You see, all of a sudden, that there’s a bit of that grey in Steve’s hair now, starting by his temples where his blonde curls were always darkest. There’s wrinkles fanned out at the corners of his eyes, ones that always used to appear when he scrunched up his face grinning, now permanent.  

 

You just stare at Steve while he looks out over the river, feeling your heart pound and still, like the water pushing and pulling at the dock. 

  
  
  
  


-

Steve leaves and you carry on, not scoring and getting caught off side like a lumbering buffalo every game. You’re frustrated, sure, angry to be in this situation and bone tired every day, but you’re also sort of resigned. It’s not even like a curse you have to lift. It’s just that, you are emptier now, less full of whatever fire that used to fill you to the brim and come spilling out every match. The sparks don’t come as often. As Steve likes to remind you in his weekly phone calls, you need to eat less at the Chippy, since you don’t have a teenager’s metabolism anymore. 

So it was less like coming back to heaven than coming back to purgatory, a sort of waiting period, happy to be here at all than not, but mostly having it beaten into you game after game that you have come back, changed. 

Then you play Fulham. Before you step on the pitch you think about it, think,  _ Maybe this time,  _ but you’ve thought that in matches before too, playing Arsenal, Chelsea- 

 

Hovering by the goal mouth before the corner you almost want to laugh because you can see it happen. It does happen. There’s only that thin veil between reality and possibility after all and you’ve always been able to tear clean through it, cocky Toxteth lad with tiny ears and fast feet.

 

_ A flash of fire- the gold in Steve’s hair picked out by the sun- the thundering sweet roar of the crowd standing up in anticipation, like the skies before it rains- and it was in you, too, it was driving you forward, your feet practically floating over the grass-  _

  
  


_ -ohhhh is it going in-  _

 

_                                                     -It IS-  _

  
  


Right now it was night all around except in Anfield; Anfield lit up like the heavens with camera flashes and floodlights, Anfield glowing like the mad pulsing red heart of the world and you within it, a god again, illuminated as your header hits the back of the net.

  
  
  


_ Robbie Fowler- this time he will not be denied.  _

  
  
  


You know the truth, this moment fades as all moments do- You’re still thirty one with bad knees, still thirty one and held together with tape and running steadily out of time, thirty one with not enough second chances left in you to believe in love anymore, except, maybe, the first one. You’re thirty one in Anfield again, the prodigal son, the exiled god. You’re thirty one, haven’t got your breath back from running, face wet with more than just sweat.

  
  
  
  


And is it worth all that, sorrow and all? 

  
  


It is. It is. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
